Synastry contact
Sun Opposition Sun Synastry: When Two Strong Wills Face Each Other
Short answer: Sun opposition Sun synastry, which means comparing two birth charts, finds your Sun (who you are) and theirs about 180° apart, usually in opposite signs. Each of you has a Sun, so the contact is the same from either side: your sense of self, will and direction face theirs from opposite sides of the zodiac. Opposite signs tend to share a pace and to have elements that complement each other, so the contact reads as polarity, meaning two opposite poles: each of you has something the other lacks, so you tend to keep running into the same difference. "Raphael" in 1905 says that when the Sun or Moon in one chart makes a square or opposition to the lights in the other, "quarrelling and enmity will occur". This page reads that as a tendency, and the friction as energy, not a flaw. It is one contact among many, and what gets built on it is up to the two of you.
Two Suns, on opposite sides of the zodiac
Every chart has a Sun, and it does one job: it is who you are. It is the self you go by, what you want, where you are heading, the energy you bring into a room. Sun opposition Sun means your Sun and their Sun are about 180° apart, half the zodiac, give or take a few degrees.
An opposition usually joins two opposite signs. The twelve signs fall into three groups by how they move: some start things, some keep them going, some adapt as they go (their usual names are cardinal, fixed and mutable). Opposite signs belong to the same group, so they tend to move at the same pace. Their elements complement each other: fire faces air, earth faces water. Usually, not always: an opposition that starts near the edge of a sign can reach past that pattern. That is geometry, and it is why this contact tends to read as polarity: each of you has what the other lacks. You are not two people who agree, as in a trine, or near-copies, as in a conjunction, but two Suns that go at life with the same force from opposite sides.
Because both of you have a Sun, the contact is the same from either side: your Sun and their Sun, and their Sun and your Sun.
It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, or a parent and their child as well as between partners, and it is only one of many contacts in any two charts.
What it is like to have Suns that face each other
For each of you, the experience tends to be of meeting someone whose will is as strong as yours and points the other way. You say what you want, and they want something that does not fit with it. A person whose sense of direction faces yours is hard to ignore.
The other has what your Sun tends to lack: a way of going about things that you would not choose, and may envy a little. That same difference is what you keep running into, because they do not do it your way.
The two of you may also be good at spotting each other's blind spots, which you each see more clearly in the other than in yourself. That can sound like criticism and can also be the most useful thing anyone says to you.
What each gives, and what each may want
Someone equally sure of themselves shows you what your own certainty looks like from outside, including what it leaves out.
What each of you may give, without trying, is the other half of a decision. One of you may say go and the other wait, or one see the whole and the other the detail. Between you, a plan tends to get both its push and its check.
What each of you may want in return is to have your direction taken seriously, not merely tolerated. It often matters to be treated as someone whose way of going about things has a reason, even when the other would never choose it.
What this contact does not tend to supply is quiet agreement. You may have to say what you mean more than once, to someone who is listening hard and still hears it differently.
How it might look
These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how the contact might show up across different kinds of pairs.
- Flatmates. Two flatmates share a weekly grocery order. One likes a fixed list that never changes; the other adds whatever looks good that week. By Thursday there are two bags of onions and no milk, and each has a clear view of whose fault that is.
- Parent and child. A parent wants their child to stick with one instrument for a year; the child wants to try a new one each term. The parent calls it quitting; the child calls it finding out. Neither moves, and the lessons get booked anyway.
- Colleagues. A customer sends an angry email. One colleague wants to reply within the hour; the other wants to check the facts first. Two different replies go out, and the customer gets both.
- Siblings. Two siblings share an allotment. One plants in straight rows from a drawn plan; the other lets things seed where they fall. In August the beans are the best on the site, and the argument about the paths is still going.
- Friends. Two friends take on a charity walk. One wants a pace plan with checkpoints; the other wants to go by feel. By the halfway point they are walking twenty metres apart, each sure the other is the problem.
- Partners. One partner wants a Saturday with a plan and a booking; the other wants none. They settle for half a plan, which pleases neither, and the evening goes quiet.
In each sketch the same thing happens: two strong wills run into each other, each has what the other lacks, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it does not.
Fire and air, earth and water, with a Sun on each side
An opposition usually joins a fire sign to the air sign across from it, or an earth sign to the water sign across from it. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, air is talk and ideas, earth is practical steadiness, water is feeling. Because each of you has a Sun, one of you has one element of the pair and the other has the other.
Fire and air. This version is quick and loud, and it turns on doing against thinking it over. Whoever has the fire Sun tends to act first, with confidence, and work out how they feel afterwards. Whoever has the air Sun tends to look at things from several sides and say what they notice. The fire Sun may find the air Sun's questions slow; the air Sun may find the fire Sun's certainty short on reasons. The fire Sun may nudge the air Sun to commit, and the air Sun may help the fire Sun put its wants into words. It might look like two friends picking a restaurant for a group: one has already booked a table, the other is still reading reviews.
Earth and water. This version is slower and deeper, and it turns on what is solid against what is felt. Whoever has the earth Sun tends to trust what can be seen, counted and built. Whoever has the water Sun tends to trust what they sense, and they sense a lot. The earth Sun may seem to miss the mood in the room; the water Sun may seem to go by something that cannot be checked. The earth Sun may also steady the water Sun, and the water Sun may soften the earth Sun's grip on how things must be done. It might look like two siblings deciding whether to sell a shared holiday cabin: one has the repair costs, the other remembers every summer there, and they are not talking about the same thing.
What the friction gives
Facing each other is not restful, and it is not nothing.
It gives each of you a clear view of yourself. Two people of one temperament can go years without noticing what their way of doing things leaves out. Across an opposition, the other person tends to do what yours leaves out.
It gives each of you a supply of what you lack. The quality in them that irritates you may be the one you could use more of, and they may feel the same about you.
It gives you range together: between you, you can usually cover both the push and the check, the big picture and the small print.
And because the same difference keeps coming up, the contact may seldom feel flat.
None of this means the contact is pleasant every day. It means it is doing something, and that the friction is energy the two of you can put to use, not a fault in either of you. It is what two strong wills facing each other are like to live with.
From the sources
What the older sources say
Raphael is the one source behind this contact. The places quoted below from Ptolemy are supporting: p. 38 speaks of aspects in general, and pp. 192–193 of the luminaries (the Sun and Moon) in two charts, not of Sun to Sun.
"Raphael" (*The Guide to Astrology*, 1905, p. 96) says that when the Sun or Moon in one nativity (birth chart) makes a friendly contact with "the lights in the other nativity", friendship follows, and that when it makes a square or opposition, "quarrelling and enmity will occur". His page prints the square and the opposition as symbols, so those words are not quoted. He writes of "the lights", so he does not spell out the Sun in one chart against the Sun in the other. Reading his line as covering Sun to Sun is an inference from its wording, not something he says.
Supporting this, Ptolemy (*Tetrabiblos*, trans. Ashmand, 1822, p. 38) calls the opposition and the quartile, his word for the square, "discordant", because they join signs "not of the same kind, but of different natures and sexes". That is a statement about aspects in general, not about two people. "Sexes" here means masculine and feminine, the old names for the two halves of the zodiac, which alternate sign by sign. Half of his reason does not fit an opposition: opposite signs are usually both masculine or both feminine. That is the zodiac's geometry, not something he says. He gives the opposition the same label all the same.
On p. 192 he looks at four places in both charts together: the Sun, the Moon, the ascendant (the sign rising at birth) and the part of fortune (a point worked out from the Sun, Moon and ascendant). Where they are only in signs at an angle to each other, he expects "minor friendship" for a trine or sextile, but "if by quartile, they will excite minor enmity". That grading is for the four places as a set, so a single Sun contact does not earn it by itself, and the passage names the quartile, not the opposition. He then adds (pp. 192–193) that where familiarity, or its absence, exists "only as regards the places of the luminaries", the friendship is "the best and most secure" and the enmity "the worst and most dangerous". He is speaking there of the luminaries in general, not of the opposition in particular.
Two older writers have a rule about the opposition, William Lilly and James Wilson. It concerns the Sun or Mars opposite Mercury or the Moon, not Sun to Sun, so this page does not use it.
Two limits follow. First, none of the passages used tells the opposition from the square. Raphael and Ptolemy on p. 38 name them together, and Ptolemy's p. 192 passage names only the quartile. The difference this page draws, that an opposition reads as polarity, each having what the other lacks, because it usually joins opposite signs of the same pace and of elements that complement each other, is this site's reading, based on the kinds of sign each aspect usually joins. The older books do not say it. Second, Raphael writes of the lights in two charts, and Ptolemy's pp. 192–193 passage of the luminaries; both can be read as covering Sun to Sun as well as Sun to Moon or Moon to Moon. That is an inference, not a point either of them makes.
They also state their readings flatly: "quarrelling and enmity will occur". Reading that as a tendency, not a description of a relationship or a promise of how it turns out, is this site's reading, and so is reading the friction as energy. So is everything else in this article about what each of you is like, what each gives and may want, the elements and what the friction gives: that is the site's own, and none of these writers says it.
These passages give the contact no direction, and here none is needed, since each of you has a Sun.
Is this you two?
- You each have a clear idea of where you are going, and they are rarely the same idea.
- The thing one of you admires most in the other is also the thing that irritates.
- Each of you could argue the other's case better than most people could.
- Now and then one of you hears yourself saying what the other would say.